50 Book Challenge 2021 Part Seven

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the seventh thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2021, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read. Could everyone embolden their titles and/or authors as well, please, as it makes the books talked about easier to track?

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here, the third one here, the fourth one here, the fifth one here and the sixth one here.

[Sprays holy water over Best ]

Too Catholic?

Just don’t start with the incense Biblio

You're safe from me, Best.

I'm not at all religious - my dad's father was a vicar but he and his brother both rebelled against that, and my mum's parents were lapsed Catholics (but it was important that they were lapsed Catholic atheists rather than C of E, especially for my grandmother). One of my mum's first cousins is a nun, and came to a family gathering at my sister's house a few years ago, so I got to meet her. Though I'm not religious myself, I do quite enjoy reading about nuns and clergy figures now and then.

My mum's father was a vicar too!

Sadik - I'm currently reading Scoff by Pen V, but admit I'm finding it a bit of a slog, largely because I feel she's actually a total snob, whilst pretending to be of humble roots. It's getting in the way a bit for me.

I should say it’s not all vicars! One of my oldest friends has just been ordained as a vicar and she’s great fun and very refreshing to be around.

Remus I looked at Scoff when it was on cheap, but wasn't convinced (keep meaning to retrieve my copy of Dorothy Hartley's Food in England from my Dad & re-read instead).

I think the mix of a bit of chat and lots of recipes in Dinner with Darcy worked better for me. Not sure I'd have been as pleased with it if I'd actually bought it though, it was a library book so gently entertaining with a few good recipes is just fine.

One of my favourite groups on Librarything, the Virago Modern Classics group, includes a former vicar now working in a different church role, another woman who is now a vicar, having trained and been ordained in the last few years (both women) and several people who are involved in church choirs. And lots of Barbara Pym fans.

EineReiseDurchDieZeit - I was going to reply about your reposed post, I'm again undecided, it's good value and occasionally good books like water for flowers pop up but otherwise it's very 3/5. I get it because the books are mostly easier reads as opposed to my normal reading habits. I might look around though

40. Who is Maud Dixon, by Alexandra Andrews. Utterly brilliant. Florence Darrow's life is falling apart when she get the opportunity to be an assistant to anonymous author Maud Dixon (real name Helen Wilcox). On a research trip to Morocco, Helen is killed in a car accident, and Florence begins to wonder - what if she stepped in to become Maud?

If you love mysteries and thrillers but are increasingly sick of all the ludicrous 'twisty' endings shoehorned in to the plot, and tired tropes, this may be for you. With deliciously horrible lead characters, this whips along at an ever increasing pace, before reaching an ending that is 50% "Oh WTF" and 50% the end of a carefully laid trail of breadcrumbs. Enormous fun.

@BadSpellaSpellaSpella

Fresh Water For Flowers and The Passenger (this months) are the only 2 I have on TBR now..I literally cancelled last night. I realised I could be spending that amount on books I have wished for instead.

34. Treacle Walker - Alan Garner

I grew up loving The Weirdstone of Brisingamen so when I heard that Garner - now 87 - had published a new novel I thought it was worth reading, though I was prepared for it to be not as good as his classics like Brisingamen and The Owl Service. I needn't have worried - this is an astonishingly good novel and I'm pretty sure will be my book of the year.

Without wanting to give too much away, it concerns Joe, a young boy living in a rural house who becomes drawn into strange events when the rag and bone man Treacle Walker calls at his home. It occupies that peculiarly British folk fantasy landscape of Garner's earlier books as well as The Dark Is Rising and more recently Lanny. And it is an absolute treat.

107. Being You by Anil Seth
     This is an exploration of what conciousness is, and how it works. Why is being us, how it is - how does our brain produce this experience.
     Seth's answer largely is that our conciousness is essentially what he calls a 'controlled hallucination' based on a series of best guesses about what the stimuli received by our senses and passed to the brain actually mean.
     In theory this is fascinating. In practice, I found the book quite hard going and I definitely couldn't manage more than a few pages at a time.
     I don't usually mind that (I've read various books about quantum physics where I have to read each page about 3 times to try to get my head around it) but I wasn't sure here that I actually felt that motivated to carry on.
     
     The book was a gift, in hardback, and tbh if it weren't for that I probably would have given up on it about half way through. Realistically a long article summarising the author's ideas would have probably suited me better. But I suspect if you're deeply interested in what conciousness is, and especially if you have an interest in philosophy, then it's probably fascinating.

108. Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell
     Perfect light relief from Being You. This is the third book in the Simon Snow series, which started as a pastiche fanfic of a Harry Potter-esq series within Rowell's book Fangirl.
     
     She then wrote the supposed 'original', Carry On where Snow and his friends defeat the big bad in true Chosen One style. The two sequels then (also in proper fanfic style) follow the cast in the aftermath as they rebuild their lives. After a road trip across the States in book 2, this brings them back to the UK to wrap up - more or less - the story.
     
     I love a good fantasy/romance, and this definitely delivered for me (though I think Rowell would do better to stick to fade-to-black on her sex scenes, it feels like she's painfully embarrassed by writing them). I'd happily read more books about the same characters / world, and although it's supposedly a trilogy it definitely felt left open for more sequels.

50. Adults - Emma Jane Unsworth Social media obsessed Jenny navigates 30-something urban life.
I actually really liked this. I wasn't a big fan of Animals, her previous novel, but I decided to read this having heard an interview with the author in which she came across really well. And I'm glad I did - it's sharp and satirical and occasionally actually laugh out loud funny, but also touching and especially brilliant on female friendship. A worthy number 50!

Meg, I'm excited about Treacle Walker. I'm saving it for Christmas, when I can read it without being disturbed by work.

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo is in the 99p deals today. If you like long, rambly family sagas then I highly recommend - it was one of my favourite reads last year.

@JaninaDuszejko

Removes Love And Other Thought Experiments from TBR pile

FortunaMajor glad you enjoyed Nights at the Circus, it's one of my favourite novels. Wise Children is similarly enjoyable. We were so robbed by Angela Carter's early death.

I have Wise Children so I now look forward to reading it. I think it's an one for me to save for next year though. Her work in is so rich and needs a lot of brain space to appreciate it properly.

179. *The Children of Jocasta - Natalie Haynes
     The Oedipus myth from the POV of Jocasta and the effects of the events surrounding them on their children.
     I usually find NH as a bit of a mess in written form (love her on the radio), but this was quite good. I think she was caught out with A Thousand Ships by other writers getting there first. There was such a glut of Trojan retellings around that it was impossible not to compare them and sadly others did it better. Much better this time round.

180. East West Street - Philippe Sands
     Thank you Terpsichore for directing me to this. I thought it was brilliant also.
     Philippe is a human right lawyer who traces back the origins of the formation of the crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity through the lens of his own family history and that of the place they lived. Coincidentally the people behind the creation of these crimes were from the same place. He looks at the Nuremberg Trials and how they came about. This is a really interesting blend of memoir and history.

181. The Wolf Den - Elodie Harper
     Very new out, this is the first in a trilogy about a doctor's daughter sold after his death into slavery into Pompeii's most notorious brothel. This was billed as a very insightful look at life as a sex slave without shying away from the facts. It was essentially Pretty Woman set in Pompeii. It's very readable, decent pace, plot, characters etc, but isn't quite what it claims to be. Historical chick lit at best.

182. Magpie Lane - Lucy Atkins
     Fast paced unputdownable thriller about a child abduction where the nanny is the prime suspect, but the parents aren't as innocent as they seem. I really enjoyed this, but saw the ending a mile off. It was nice to have a print book that kept me reading as I've been struggling to concentrate with real books this year.

183. The Book of Lost Names - Kristin Harmel
     A French Jewish woman flees to the unoccupied zone after her father is seized by the Nazis. She falls into a Resistance ring helping others escape to freedom. Years later her work during the war comes to light.
     Very enjoyable historical fiction, but the audio version contains some shocking pronunciations, so not one for French speakers unless you want serious cringe factor. Also a bit cry baity at the end.

184. The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
     Dawkins sets out to dismantle religion and put forward a case for atheism. It's interesting and convincing, but I'm already that way inclined. I picked this up as he pops up time and time again on You Tube rabbit holes that I fall down far too regularly. It had a great quote from Emerson, The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.

51 Material Girls. Why Reality Matters for Feminism. Kathleen Stock

Considering the response this has had I was expecting something considerably more outrageous. Kathleen Stock is remarkably even handed and mild in her views, and made this gender critical feminist think about my own attitudes. Took longer to read than I expected due to the philosophical bent to the argument which took thinking about for this reader.

The new Sally Rooney next for me but is anyone thinking about their Christmas reading yet? I've got The Dark is Rising, The Box of Delight (which I read multiple times as a child), A Maigret Christmas plus some Charles Dickens Christmas stories lined up as options. I read Jeanette Winterson's Christmas Days last Christmas which I can highly recommend.

Janina I agree that Material Girls could not be more moderate. It's the mildest of reasonable arguments. It did bend my head a little from the philosophy angle as I'm not well versed in the discipline. I was saving it to mark as read once we've had our book club chat. She was due to speak to us just before all this kicked off and we hope to reschedule. She spoke at an event I went to just before lockdown and she had a bit of a stern word about behaviour on the GC side which really hit home. Very interesting. We're on Julie Bindel's new book Feminism for Women which I haven't started yet, but others are making very positive noises about it.

Just put a hold on Treacle Walker- loved The Owl Service as a child. Thanks for the heads up!
106,107) The Unfinished Clue and Detection Unlimited by Georgette Heyer. More comfort reading- two of her better detective stories, but not a patch on a good Christie (although I absolutely love Heyer's historical romances).

I enjoyed Alan Garner's memoir Where Shall We Run To? when it came out a couple of years ago. He grew up in Alderley Edge, the village where he still lives (in an ancient house) and where his forbears had lived for generations before him. His connection with the past runs very deep.

Isn't The Weirdstone of Brisingamen set in or around Alderley Edge? I found Alan Garner very weird as a child, should probably try rereading him now.

Yes, it is, Janina - he was very influenced by the local folk-legends his family told him, his grandfather in particular. The memoir really makes it clear how deeply his upbringing informed his writing.